Well known PR blogger Steve Rubel has called out another well known PR blogger and writer for WebProNews and AllBusiness Jeremy Pepper over Pepper’s use of trackback spam in an attempt to drive additional traffic to his blog.

Writes Rubel:
“Jeremy Pepper trackbacked me today, but I am not letting his trackback go live on my blog. A trackback is a continuation of a dialogue, not a traffic-building gimmick. In Jeremy’s case, he was trackbacking one of my posts from today by updating one that he wrote five months ago…this tactic is bordering on trackback spam.”

I’m with Rubel on this one but I differ on one point: its not bordering on being trackback spam because IT IS TRACKBACK SPAM. Whether Pepper’s intentions were to drive traffic to his blog or to improve his Google juice is not clear but either way when your sending a trackback to a site you should be referencing that post today. If your looking to add to the conversation write a comment, don’t trackback a 5 month old post.

A potential recruit to the new Weblogs Inc., food blog Slashfood has posted a full copy of a contract she was offered to write for the site on a competing food blog “Food Blog ‘scool” after “recruiters” for the Jason Calacanis managed company (I believe Deidre Woollard) refused to discuss parts of the contract with her that precluded her from writing at other sites.
Kate Hopkins writes on the contract:

“[the] money wasn’t the reason I didn’t sign with Weblogs. The issues I had dealt with section 10 (Covenant Not to Compete) combined with section 11 (Acknowledgements). The contract could be easily interpretted that I could not involve myself with any other food and travel publications (not just web sites) until 6 months after we parted company. I felt very unomfortable with that…Add to that that posts on their sites means less time I can put on my own. I didn’t like that idea at all. So I passed on their offer.”

SixApart have announced the release of MovableType 3.2 for the general public. Darren writes that “MT 3.2 is a free update if you’€™re updating from 3.X versions, and personal editions now have unlimited blogs.”

Day 5 of 100 blogs in 100 days, and only 95 days of new blog bliss to go so make sure you don’t miss a thing!. Today’s blog comes to us from Damien Nash
Blog: The Burning Question
About: “Essentially, visitors send in their questions and we (now up to a team of 3) answer them as best we can. We have had some great and diverse questions so far and the site is very well received by those who have found it thus far. To be featured on 100 blogs in 100 days would be great, as it would expand our readerbase and ensure more brilliant and stimulating questions. While there are other Q&A sites out there, not many are blogs which makes this one stand out from the usual blog where everyone talks about similar issues at similar times. ”

So drop on by and check out The Burning Question and leave you comments here. As a rule I’m not going to leave my own thoughts on each blog that gets a run, but I do with this one because although it may not be an original idea (as suggested in the about column) this is still a cool idea, and I hope it works for Damien.

A little quiet in the blogosphere today as all everyone wants to talk about is Google Talk, but there’s a new feature in Gmail that will come in handy for bloggers using the service, or not using it because they cant use their own domain’s email address: the ability to set up a customizable ‘From:’ address.

You can now send emails from Gmail with your own off-Gmail email address. For example my editor@blogherald.com email is forwarded to my Gmail account, but previously I’ve had to respond to email’s received with my gmail address as the sending email. Now I can send email back out, from within Gmail using my blogherald.com address and not my gmail one. The closest comparison that can be made is the same argument as owning your own domain name: you can move service providers but you still own the domain.

Day 4 of 100 blogs in 100 days sees us dash across the Atlantic for a blog from Yzabel
Blog: The Y Logs
About:”The Y Logs contain mostly reflexions about writing and blogging, with tips that I gather along the way. My aim here is to document the long process of going from aspirant writer to published author, including all the woes, questioning and editing matters one may encounter on the road. It’s primarily about writing, but I believe that knowing how to write properly and in an interesting fashion can be an asset for “simply blogging” as well as for professionnal works.”

So drop on by and check out The Y Logs, a leave your comments here for Yzabel.

Spam blog creators are panicking and Google might not be a lazy as I thought they were, because spam blogs are under attack and it appears that Google might be cracking down on them aside from the ridiculous “flag” option they now have in place.

As part of my ongoing investigation into these guys I’m on a number of their mailing lists under various email addresses, and I got this in the email today from Blogbunner promoter Rick Butts, who we last featured on August 3 when Yahoo! started cracking down on My Yahoo! users using the service to get indexed only. I’ve kept it in full for reference without editing it. I’m sure it will make you smile as much as I did when I read it, although you’ll note that as usual they are promising big changes to try and keep their gullible clients on side. I await with interest to see what the new program is.[Read more…]

Paul Scrivens has announced changes for the growing 9rules blog network, significantly dropping the revenue sharing model that was previously in place for Adsense. All bloggers on the network, which is famed for its good looking blogs but works differently to other networks because the blogs remain hosted, owned and designed by the bloggers who write them (a confederation of blogs might be a better description) now get to keep all their Adsense dollars.

I also hear on the grapevine that Scriven’s is looking at moving the network to a Pijamas Media model where he’ll take a cut of the action to place advertisements.

Weblogs Inc’s uber-gizmo blog Engadget, arguably the most popular blog on the planet (well… No.1 on the Feedster 500 anyway) is seeking bloggers for what many would consider to be the dream blog writing gig of a lifetime.

The three paying positions available are Daytime editor, European correspondent and Engadget Japanese editor and experience in a similar position is not necessary, but you will need to be able to write and write well.

To apply you’ll need to provide three sample posts written in “the Engadget style”, a list of “your top three gadgets of the year (so far’€¦) and fave all-time gadget”, your salary requirements, and a few words about yourself. Further details are available on Engadget here.